The Endicott Enquirer News from the Southern Tier

Managing Through Good Times and Bad

Sometimes it sucks to be in middle management, other times it seems great because things are going your way and your staff are in the groove. Today was an in the groove kind of day for me on most fronts but on the people front I see myself getting frustrated with a member of my staff and I'm not sure what to do about it.

How do you motivate someone to work harder when they only want to do the minimum to get by? How do you motivate someone in a very technical computer field when they don't have any curiosity or drive to solve a problem? How do you get someone to believe that making the client happy is the goal of our business?

These are the questions I find myself asking about this person over and over again, yet I am still stuck on the fact that I have never had to deal with a programmer that did not have a natural curiosity and drive to solve tough problems. I find that in general, programmers like to be presented with a challenge that they have not seen before, but not this person. Unless you spoon feed them the logic and the information about where they can find information in a database (which they are supposed to be an expert with to begin with) then they sit in their chair waiting for someone to give them the answers. This really bugs me, I am someone who thrives on the challenge of someone saying "prove me wrong" or "how can I make this work?" and I will never understand why people would rather whine about how they don't have enough training to solve a problem when they have all of the learning materials they need sitting on their desk.

I can tell you already that this programmer does not want me to pick up a book and teach myself how to do what they swear is impossible without attending training for weeks. They don't want me to do this because then I will really not put up with the whining and the "no" answers any longer which will lead to one of three things: They will leave the company on their own, they will wise up to reality and begin making the effort or they will leave the company involuntarily. Obviously I would like the middle option to be selected here but I have a feeling it would not be so. The other reason why I don't want to pick this book up and teach myself what they swear is impossible is because if I do then I become the baby sitter for this programmer, checking up on them, making sure they are doing their work and actually not telling people no at the same time. If I stay away from the programming then I also don't get sucked into the trap of me being the only one in the company that can perform a task efficiently and then get stuck always doing it. I have enough going on currently managing the business of the department and not actually doing the technical work for everyone. I've ben there and done that for a long time it feels like so I do not want to let myself go down that road.

I guess when it comes down to it, the problem I face is all about how you get a person who doesn't want to do anything and turn them into someone who will make it happen. So the question I leave for you is, how do you execute this maneuver without causing the staff member to call it quits rather than turning themselves around.